Sugarbush
Almost three decades since he first strapped in atop Sugarbush, VT, Jesse Huffman returns to examine his lifelong relationship with the place formerly known as Mascara Mountain. There, he finds a new groove in his old stomping ground.
Try to capture the essence of a place you’ve returned to nearly every winter since fourth grade. It’s pretty slippery, and, in the end, totally personal. I thought I knew, after I left my native Vermont to live in the Northwest and travel as a pro. I’d fly back east every Christmas, happy to hot lap the old hit run and hopefully float through some cold pow. And I certainly thought I’d already uncovered every nook and cranny of my home resort after I moved back to Vermont – completing a 14-year boomerang, from Brithish Columbia to Portland, OR and most recently New York City.
The trails, the little curb cuts and the tight, puckery tree shots – all the same as my middle-school and high school heydays, it seemed. But change is the only currency you can truly count on. A new crew of riders with new stashes; my stepson, learning to ride himself. What sounded like a broken record, skipping over the familiar scrape of steel edges on ice, bounced into a new groove, and a new song, at a very familiar place: Sugarbush…